Eye on Iran: Poll: 84 Percent Call Possible Deal 'Bad Idea'

Join UANI           Top Stories Fox News: "Americans fear disaster if Iran gets nuclear weapons -- and support military force to stop it... Some 55 percent think it would be 'a disaster' if Iran were to obtain the capability to use nuclear weapons, while 40 percent sees it as 'a problem that can be managed.' ... Overall, two-thirds of voters (65 percent) favor the U.S. using military action, if necessary, to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Just 28 percent are opposed... Voters overwhelmingly reject that deal: 84 percent -- including 80 percent of Democrats -- think it's a bad idea to allow Iran to get nuclear weapons 10 years from now in return for agreeing it won't obtain nukes before then." http://t.uani.com/1CH9Nk0 NYT: "All along the green irrigated plains in the heart of what American occupying troops used to call the Sunni triangle, lampposts and watchtowers are flying the flags of the Badr Organization, a Shiite militia long hated and feared by many Iraqi Sunnis. The road from Baghdad to Tikrit is dotted with security checkpoints, many festooned with posters of Iran's supreme leader and other Shiite figures. They stretch as far north as the village of Awja, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, on the edge of Tikrit, within sight of the hulking palaces of the former ruler who ruthlessly crushed Shiite dissent. More openly than ever before, Iran's powerful influence in Iraq has been on display as the counteroffensive against Islamic State militants around Tikrit has unfolded in recent days. At every point, the Iranian-backed militias have taken the lead in the fight against the Islamic State here. Senior Iranian leaders have been openly helping direct the battle, and American officials say Iran's Revolutionary Guards forces are taking part." http://t.uani.com/1NpQj6D Reuters: "Iran's foreign minister on Thursday suggested that a 10-year moratorium on some aspects of the country's nuclear program might be acceptable to Tehran, though he declined to discuss the issue in detail.  U.S. President Barack Obama told Reuters on Monday that Iran must commit to a verifiable freeze of at least 10 years on sensitive nuclear activity for a landmark atomic deal to be reached between Tehran and six world powers. CNN's Christiane Amanpour asked Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in an interview if Tehran was prepared to accept decade-long limits on a nuclear program it insists is peaceful. 'It depends on how you define it,' Zarif said. 'If we have an agreement, we are prepared to accept certain limitations for a certain period of time but I'm not prepared to negotiate on the air.' On Tuesday Zarif was quoted by Iranian media as saying that Obama's demand for a 10-year partial freeze was unacceptable." http://t.uani.com/1H6mBiE     Nuclear Program & Negotiations Reuters: "No deal has been reached yet on the duration of any possible final agreement with world powers on Iran's nuclear program, Tehran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Wednesday. Iran, currently in negotiations with six powers, had rebuffed as unacceptable comments by U.S. President Barack Obama that any accord should last at least a decade. Diplomats say 10 years would be viewed as a rather short deal. 'Certainly for the time being there is no agreement on the duration,' the ambassador, Reza Najafi, told reporters after an IAEA board meeting in Vienna... Iran has been stalling a U.N. investigation into its nuclear program, which is designed to determine whether it has had any possible military dimensions (PMD). The United States urged Iran at the IAEA meeting to step up its cooperation... Najafi again said that the IAEA has been using some flawed evidence in its investigation. He referred to a case related to a former CIA officer who was convicted in January of leaking classified information to a reporter about a failed U.S. effort to undermine Iran's nuclear program... 'From now on PMD should stand for predominantly manufactured dimension,' Najafi told the IAEA governors, according to the text of his speech to the closed-door session." http://t.uani.com/1DQ4QRl Reuters: "A good deal is at hand in negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said on Friday. Mogherini told a foreign policy conference in the Latvian capital that she was committed to bringing the Iranian nuclear talks to a positive end. 'I believe a good deal is at hand. I also believe that there is not going to be any deal if it is not going to be a good deal. And this is something we have to pass as a message to all our friends and partners,' she said in apparent reference to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's criticism of the nuclear deal under negotiation." http://t.uani.com/1MbXRqk Congressional Sanctions Reuters: "Republican U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday postponed plans to debate and vote next week on a bill requiring President Barack Obama to submit any nuclear agreement with Iran to Congress for approval. Many Democrats, including the bill's co-sponsors, had not wanted a vote before an end-March deadline set by international negotiators for reaching a framework agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program... The bill would require the president to submit a final nuclear agreement to Congress and restrict his authority to waive sanctions for 60 days so lawmakers have time to weigh in... Senator Robert Menendez, who introduced the measure last week with Republican Senator Bob Corker, was among several Democrats who said they would not vote until the end of the month... Corker said his goal was a veto-proof majority to send the 'strongest signal' to negotiators. Many members of Congress from both parties worry Obama is so eager for a nuclear deal that his negotiators will make too many concessions. 'I greatly appreciate the Majority Leader's commitment to getting the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act across the finish line by allowing the vote to occur at a time when we will more likely generate a veto-proof majority,' Corker said in a statement." http://t.uani.com/1BW3hGu Sanctions Relief Press TV (Iran): "Iran said on Sunday that an agreement has been finalized with the French auto major Peugeot for the production of cars in the country. Hashem Yekke-Zare, the managing director of Iran Khodro Industrial Group, has told reporters that the agreement with Peugeot has 'exceptional terms' that cannot be compared with any previous deals with foreign auto makers.  'Based on the deal with Peugeot, a joint venture will be established with Iran Khordro,' Yekke-Zare has been quoted as saying by Mehr news agency. 'Peugeot will accordingly have to export 30 percent of the products that are produced in the joint venture,' he added. Yekke-Zare further emphasized that once the agreement with Peugeot is made operational, Iran and France will create a hub for the exports of cars in the Persian Gulf region. He also said Iran Khodro is at the same time negotiating with a non-Asian partner whose name will be announced in the near future... Iran Khodro has already signed several JV deals with European and Asian majors including Peugeot, Renault, Mercedes-Benz and Suzuki." http://t.uani.com/1DSzTMm Sanctions Enforcement Bloomberg: "Commerzbank AG, Germany's second-largest lender, will pay at least $1.4 billion to settle federal and state claims that it violated U.S. sanctions, a person briefed on the matter said. The settlement, part of a deferred-prosecution agreement that would also resolve a separate money-laundering matter, may come as soon as this month, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions aren't public... The accord is the latest settlement with a global bank over dealings with blacklisted countries, including Iran and Sudan. In June, BNP Paribas SA pleaded guilty to violating U.S. sanctions laws and agreed to pay a record $8.9 billion to resolve the case." http://t.uani.com/17Y3JGi Iraq Crisis NYT: "Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said after meetings with Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday that Gulf Arab countries support international talks over Iran's nuclear program, but remain concerned about Tehran's regional influence. Mr. Kerry met in Saudi Arabia with top officials of six Arab nations, addressing concerns about the effect of the nuclear talks on the balance of power in the region. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said at a news conference with Mr. Kerry afterward that the U.S. had provided assurances that it would continue to focus on Iran's destabilizing activities in the region. 'He has been very clear in the assurances he gave,' Prince Saud said. He added that Iran's influence in the Middle East 'is really the main concern' of the Gulf Arab countries. The Saudi foreign minister pointed to Iran's involvement in Iraq, where the Iraqi forces and Shiite militias backed by Tehran fought to push militant group Islamic State out of the city of Tikrit. 'The situation in Tikrit is a prime example of what we are worried about,' he said. 'Iran is taking over the country.'" http://t.uani.com/1waxOxy WashPost: "Qassem Suleimani, the Iranian general helping militias fight the Islamic State in Iraq, is known by many names. He's the 'Shadow Commander,' according to a profile by the New Yorker's Dexter Filkins. He's the 'Dark Knight,' according to a piece by Foreign Policy magazine. And he's the Iranian regime's 'Mr. Fix-It,' according to the Weekly Standard, which threw in a comparison to the Most Interesting Man in the World from the Dos Equis beer commercials for good measure. He's also been designated a terrorist by the United States on more than one occasion, and accused of playing a leading role in arming Shiite militias in Iraq to attack and kill U.S. troops during the Iraq war. The general is also thought to be a fierce supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Therein lies both the mystique and notoriety of Suleimani. He has been the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force since the late 1990s, exerting a broad influence on the Middle East that has often been at odds with Washington's vision for the region. But for most of that time, he has stayed in the shadows, leading an organization that is part Special Operations force, part paramilitary." http://t.uani.com/1H6xykm Human Rights Reuters: "FIFA president Sepp Blatter has asked Iran to end its ban on women watching football matches, describing the situation as intolerable. 'When I travelled to Iran in November 2013, I was not only confronted with huge popular enthusiasm from football but also a law forbidding women from attending football matches,' he wrote in FIFA's weekly magazine. 'I raised the topic at my meeting with the President of Iran Hassan Rouhani, and came away with the impression that this intolerable situation could change over the medium term.' However, nothing has happened. A collective 'stadium ban' still applies to women in Iran, despite the existence of a thriving women's football organisation. 'This cannot continue. Hence, my appeal to the Iranian authorities; open the nation's football stadiums to women.'" http://t.uani.com/18XbwW4 AFP: "International rights group Amnesty International condemned Iranian authorities Friday for what it said was the 'unspeakably cruel' blinding of a man on the grounds of retribution. The man was forcibly blinded in his left eye Tuesday under the principle of 'qisas' -- an eye for an eye -- at a prison in Karaj, west of Tehran, Amnesty said. The man had been convicted of throwing acid in another man's face in 2009, leading to a 10-year prison sentence, an order to pay blood money to the victim and the act of retribution. 'Punishing someone by deliberately blinding them is an unspeakably cruel and shocking act,' said Raha Bahreini, Amnesty's Iran researcher, in a statement. 'This punishment exposes the utter barbarity of Iran's justice system and underlines the Iranian authorities' shocking disregard for basic humanity.'" http://t.uani.com/17Y387r Opinion & Analysis UANI Advisory Board Member Michael Gerson in WashPost: "Over the years, President Obama has been criticized and praised - but mainly praised - for lacking a driving foreign policy ideology. It seemed to be one of the 'childish things' he promised to set aside as he launched his presidency in 2009. America's conduct in the world would be characterized by outreach, consultation, flexibility and a prudent recognition of limits. Now comes the prospect of a nuclear deal with Iran, forcing a revised assessment from future presidential historians. Obama is contemplating what Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute calls 'a revolution in the conception of America's role in the region.' Since the Carter administration - which saw the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Iranian revolution - U.S. presidents have pledged to prevent any hostile power from controlling the Persian Gulf. A series of alliances and relationships were established and maintained - sometimes with difficult or shady partners - to enforce the Carter Doctrine. Now Obama is offering Iran the prospect of being, in his words, 'a very successful regional power' in exchange for limits on its nuclear program. Across the board, the administration emphasizes common interests with Iran in the defeat of the Islamic State. So the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, recently argued that Iran's direct military intervention in Iraq may be a 'positive thing.' A sort of offer to Iran was always on the table, at least during the George W. Bush years, if the regime would: (1) abandon its nuclear ambitions, (2) respect human rights and (3) end support for terrorism. Iran, in essence, could be treated as a normal nation if it actually became a normal nation. Obama has now narrowed U.S. demands entirely to the first category, the nuclear file. Concessions in this area - perhaps even temporary concessions - will allow Iran to escape sanctions, rejoin the global community and even become a partner in defeating Sunni extremism. It is, presumably, an offer the Iranians can't refuse. This was the context for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress. He was attempting to reconnect Iranian nuclear ambitions to its broader conduct, ideology and ambitions. In the process, the leader of a Jewish state - extraordinarily - became a credible spokesman for America's Gulf State allies, who fear that the United States is overturning old promises and relationships. This is happening. In its bold attempt at an Iranian opening, the Obama administration views Netanyahu, AIPAC, the Gulf States, Congress and, perhaps, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as obstacles. Its partners are Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Obama and a small knot of advisers believe this deal could be the defining foreign policy moment of the second term - the Cuba opening, times 100. This driving vision has already distorted U.S. policy in a variety of ways. Obama could not take forceful action against Iran's proxy, the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, for fear of undermining nuclear negotiations. The administration has downplayed the issue of human rights in Iran for the same reason. The United States has now blessed the operation of Iranian-dominated militias within Iraq - particularly in the liberation of Tikrit - raising the prospect of Iranian control over Iraq's security and oil sectors. Iranian military forces and proxies now operate freely from Baghdad to Beirut, seemingly tolerated in the overarching strategic goal of defeating the Islamic State. As Obama has avoided direct confrontation with Iran to preserve the viability of nuclear talks, Iran has been busy destabilizing the Middle East, replacing us as the major power and threatening our allies. And those allies have taken note. All these risks and compromises make sense only if Obama reaches his transformational agreement with Iran. But Iran knows this as well, which puts America in a poor negotiating position... The likely result? A bad deal, leaving Iranians with substantial nuclear capability and infrastructure, beginning a mad rush to lift sanctions, and essentially accommodating Iranian aggression across the region. If, as the Obama administration will certainly argue, there is no alternative to accepting this agreement, it is because it has worked for none and left none." http://t.uani.com/1BaVfae UANI Advisory Board Member Jack David in RCW: "Belief in a world where international conflict is resolved in a framework of tolerance, non-aggression, and the rule of law has underpinned our national security policy since the end of the Cold War. But our policy leaders have been often unable to recognize and admit that some global actors who oppose this vision cannot be persuaded to negotiate in a manner consistent with it. In such circumstances further diplomacy becomes an exercise in wishful thinking, and it prevents the United States from framing policies and taking actions that will protect its people and interests. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made this point in his address to the U.S. Congress on Tuesday. The recent history of U.S. relations with Russia, China, Iran, and the Middle East illustrates the theme. And the White House's current approach to Iran underlines it.... The same sort of wishful thinking has infected our stance toward the Middle East. Policymakers and much of the U.S. media have ignored and dismissed words and deeds that demonstrate implacable hostility to the American vision and malevolent intentions regarding important U.S. interests. Iran has consistently declared its intention to establish its Islamofascist rule in the Middle East. It has funded and exported terrorism around the world (even on U.S. soil) and cheated on its treaty obligations, including its agreement as a non-nuclear member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to not develop nuclear weapons. We initiated negotiations with Iran to compel it to honor its NPT commitments, which are to not acquire nuclear weapons and to abide by UN Security Council resolutions requiring Tehran to suspend enrichment of uranium. Iran has violated that treaty and those resolutions for years. Now, we are reportedly are on the verge of sealing a deal that would allow Iran 10 years to engage in limited enrichment - supposedly insufficient to make a nuclear weapon in less than a year. Then, after 10 years, Iran could engage in unlimited enrichment, a central ingredient of a nuclear weapons program. As suggested by Netanyahu in his address to Congress, such a deal could be supported only by people who believe that in 10 years Iran will reform - that it will stop supporting terrorists, stop seeking nuclear weapons, and stop aggressively touting the downfall of America and Israel. Apparently, the leaders crafting policy in Washington believe they will persuade Iran to do just that." http://t.uani.com/1waD3x8 Dennis Ross in USA Today: "While the Obama administration is unlikely to accept his argument that it should simply negotiate better and harder, it should not dismiss the concerns Netanyahu raises about the emerging deal. Indeed, the administration's argument that there is no better alternative than the deal it is negotiating begs the question of whether the prospective agreement is acceptable. And, here, the administration needs to explain why the deal it is trying to conclude actually will prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons for the lifetime of the agreement and afterwards. It needs to explain why the combinationof the number and quality of centrifuges, their output, and the ship-out from Iran of enriched uranium will, in fact, ensure that the break-out time for the Iranians will not be less than one year. Either this combination adds up or it does not, but there should be an explicit answer to Netanyahu's charge that Iran will be able to break out much more quickly. Similarly, there should be an answer on how the verification regime is going to work to ensure that we can detect, even in a larger nuclear program, any Iranian violation of the agreement. The issue of verification is critical not just because Iran's past clandestine nuclear efforts prove it cannot be trusted, but also because the administration has made a one-year break-out time the key measure of success of the agreement. But we can be certain that Iran will be one year away from being able to produce a bomb's supply of weapons-grade uranium only if we can detect what they are doing when they do it. Obviously, detection is only part of the equation. We cannot wait to determine what we will do about violations when they happen. Iran must know in advance what the consequences are for violations, particularly if we want to deter them in the first place. This clearly goes to the heart of Netanyahu's concerns: If he had high confidence that we would impose harsh consequences in response to Iranian violations, including the use of force if we caught Iran dashing toward a weapon, he would be less fearful of the agreement he believes is going to emerge. But he does not see that, and he fears that, as with past arms control agreements, we will seek to discuss violations and not respond to them until it is too late. The administration should address this fear and prove it means what it says by spelling out different categories of violations and the consequences for each - and then seek congressional authorization to empower this president and his successors to act on these consequences. If applied also to Iranian moves toward a nuclear weapon after the expiration of the deal, the administration would truly be answering the most significant of the concerns that Netanyahu raised. Maybe then, this episode of U.S.-Israeli tension would be overcome." http://t.uani.com/1Nq11Kx WashPost Editorial: "U.S. Commanders are taking an upbeat view of Iran's close involvement in an assault by Iraqi forces on the city of Tikrit, which has been held by the Islamic State since summer. After reporting that two-thirds of the attackers were from Shiite militias and the operation had 'overt...Iranian support,' Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said in a congressional hearing Tuesday that 'if they perform in a credible way...then it will in the main have been a positive thing.' Such optimism seems shortsighted. While any reduction in the Islamic State has benefits, the Tikrit operation raises multiple red flags. The United States was excluded by the Iraqi government of Haider al-Abadi; meanwhile, Iran has dispatched its own ground forces, artillery and drones. The assistance is being overseen by a notorious general, Qassem Suleimani, who previously supervised attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. Tikrit, the home town of Saddam Hussein, is part of Iraq's Sunni heartland, so the heavy involvement of Shiite Iran and the militias allied with it could turn what is supposed to be a counterterrorism campaign into a sectarian bloodbath. Even if it does not, a victory would advance Tehran's goal of extending its influence across Iraq, rather than being limited to the central government in Baghdad and Shiite-populated areas... The Tikrit operation underlines the Obama administration's ill-advised dependence on Iran in an under-resourced Iraq strategy. According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. officials say a tacit division of labor has developed between Iranian and U.S. forces, with American commanders focused on a planned offensive to retake Mosul, the largest city under Islamic State control, this year. But Iraqi officials are describing Iran as more committed than the United States and expressing irritation at the Obama administration's slowness to provide resources. They have a point: Iran has deployed the front-line tactical advisers that President Obama has refused to authorize. By allowing Iran to take the military lead in Tikrit and other parts of Iraq, the United States might speed the destruction of the Islamic State. But the administration is also risking the undoing of all the work that has been done since last summer to prevent Iraq from fragmenting along sectarian lines - and it is allowing Iran to take another step toward replacing the terrorist regime with its own malevolent hegemony." http://t.uani.com/1BW4wFx John Hannah in FP: "There's so much wrong with the emerging Iran nuclear deal that it's hard to know where to begin. But as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear in his speech this week to Congress, the biggest flaw is almost certainly the deal's so-called sunset provision. Amazingly, the Obama administration is prepared to sign an agreement that will expire in a mere 10 years' time. At that point, any restrictions that the deal imposes on Iran's nuclear program would vanish. Iran's economy would be free from all nuclear-related sanctions and its government would be treated the same as any other non-nuclear-weapon state that is a non-proliferation treaty member in good standing. That means that Iran could be like Holland, which spins hundreds of thousands of advanced centrifuges to produce reactor fuel. It could be like Japan, which maintains enough stockpiled plutonium for thousands of nuclear warheads. It could be like Brazil, which plans to produce bomb-grade uranium enriched to 90 percent to power its nuclear submarines. All that will be perfectly permissible under the deal that Obama is negotiating. And it would have the full blessing of the United States and the rest of the international community, not to mention billions of dollars in trade and investment that's likely to flow once sanctions are eased. In exchange, all Obama requires is a decade's worth of nuclear restraint from the mullahs - a decent interval, if you will - that will allow him to claim victory and get out of Washington without the embarrassment of a mushroom cloud over the Iranian desert, while leaving the resulting mess to his successor or (if we're really lucky) to his successor's successor. The bottom line: The Obama administration is prepared to allow the Islamic Republic to get within the proverbial screwdriver's turn away from the bomb, regardless of whether in 2025 Iran is ruled by the equivalent of Ahmadinejad 2.0, regardless of whether it remains the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, and regardless of whether its leaders continue to call for the destruction of Israel. At that point, with Iran having a massive nuclear infrastructure in place, Obama's so-called breakout time of at least a year would be history. The ability of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to detect a small covert weapons effort would virtually evaporate. The time it would take Iran to sneak out to a bomb would drop to a matter of days. By the time the world realized what was happening - much less mobilized an effective response - it would almost certainly be too late. That's why Netanyahu said that Obama's deal 'doesn't block Iran's path to the bomb, it paves Iran's path to the bomb.' He was right. The Obama sunset clause is truly a catastrophe. It almost guarantees that America, Israel, and our Arab allies will have to confront the nightmare of an Iran with nuclear weapons in the not-too-distant future, at a point when the economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation that have done so much to shackle the mullahs will be but a distant memory. Talk about a ticking time bomb." http://t.uani.com/1Bf28pP          Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.